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My goal for this week was to stay out of the store and only need basics at the beginning of the week. Every year we spend time at the beach with my husbands parents and sisters. A big family vacation has it’s perks in sharing cooking and meals but also means that we need snacks and other items we normally don’t have at home (something about the ocean turns my children into ravenous monsters).

The biggest savings tip for saving on a beach vacation is your food. Buying groceries at beach grocery stores will cost sometimes 2 times the regular price, and you don’t want to eat out or the budget is gone (remember I have 5 kids). So we pack half the kitchen it feels, and bring as much as we can with us. I spend weeks ahead watching deals and grabbing snacks, drinks and food we’ll need with the goal of not needing much at all while we are there. This year that meant packing almost 3 laundry baskets of food and 3 ice chests of frozen and refrigerated items. To see everything we pack, head over and checkout the frugal vacation packing list I made a few years ago.

So how did we do??
I did run to the store twice once on the way for a few things I knew we didn’t bring (but also knew were on sale) and the second trip was for the trip of things you always forget… please tell me I’m not alone here.

For both trips we spent about $55. That was mostly produce and milk. We brought everything we had in the fridge at home but needed more too. It also included extra milk for my husbands homemade ice cream, he tends to make a new batch every day while we are at the beach.

I did manage to follow sales and use a few coupons but it wasn’t near our normal savings. That’s okay though, the amount saved in the back of the car traveling with us was far more than I could have ever saved buying it all there! If I had purchased everything we ate this week at the store nearby I would guess it would have cost over $500, so stockpiling and deal hunting in advance cut that to around $100 spread out over a few weeks.

How was your savings this week? Leave a comment or a link to your savings post.

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Hi, I'm Jenny!

I'm a stay at home mom of five girls. I started couponing with a lot of skepticism but was quickly saving our family over $400 a month! Now my goal is to make couponing easy and fun for everyone to save at least 50% off their household needs every week.
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